(director/writer: NB Mager; cinematographer: Shachar Langley; editor: Max Berger; music: Mandy Hoffman; cast: Alyssa Marvin (Meg), Patrick Wilson (Mr. Shelby), Margaret Cho (Principal Linda), Sophia Torres (Penny), Elizabeth Marvel (Nancy), Molly Ringwald (Val Parker), Yul Vazquez (Dan Parker), Bill Camp (Mr. Hunt); Runtime: 96; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Julie Christeas, Frank Hall Green; Tandem Pictures; 2026)
“Offbeat, coming-of-age, dark comedy, about coping with grief over a school shooting.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The female filmmaker NB Mager is the first-time feature film director-writer of this offbeat, coming-of-age, dark comedy, about coping with grief over a school shooting and searching for a solution to end the problem. It features a marvelous Alyssa Marvin in her first starring role, as she plays again the same character she played in Mager’s same-named 2023 short film version.
Ten years earlier the art teacher mother of the now geeky 13-year-old Meg (Alyssa Marvin) was killed in a school shooting, along with 3 students. Meg currently lives with her cool 17-year-old cousin Penny (Sophia Torres) and her strict Aunt Val (Molly Ringwald) and Uncle Dan (Yul Vazquez). She holds Mr. Shelby (Patrick Wilson), mom’s colleague, a music teacher, in high esteem, as he was the hero who brought down the shooter with his gun and still teaches there. Meg also gets to meet the shooter’s mother (Elizabeth Marvel), who lives in her neighborhood and they become friends.
There’s an upcoming school commemoration ceremony in the works to mark the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy. Meg is a freshman harp player attending the same school where mom was shot, and she’s driven to write a musical reenactment of the shooting with Penny starring in it.
The unhinged school janitor (Bill Camp), obsessed with shooting squirrels on the grounds, and the overwhelmed principal (Margaret Cho), hired after the shooting, who wants no reminders of that dark day but to solemnly mark its anniversary by singing “Amazing Grace,” are satisfied that school officials now can carry guns that shoot rubber bullets.
The point made is that to change things to end mass gun shootings in the schools we have to try all kinds of things, as even getting better gun laws might not be enough. I can buy into that but couldn’t buy into finding the solution is with a musical reenactment of the shooting. The film has good intentions, but Mager’s solution left me with an empty feeling it was reaching for something that might work in a Hollywood movie but have little chance of working in real-life.
It played at the Sundance Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 2/3/2026 GRADE: C+
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